


Choices

by vassalady



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Gift Fic, POV Female Character, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-20
Updated: 2014-09-20
Packaged: 2018-02-17 13:37:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2311508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vassalady/pseuds/vassalady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After taking down SHIELD, Maria Hill is faced with the problem of who she is now. She needs time to figure that out, but in the meantime, she'll do what she can to help Steve and Sam find Bucky.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Choices

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tielan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/gifts).



> This is my gift for tielan for Avengers Fest!
> 
> I haven't written Maria much, so it was really fun to work with her. This is sort of partial character study and partial gen-ish Maria focused sequel to the movie. I wanted to explore what Maria might do after Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and it ended up being about Maria's journey afterwards and how she's influenced by others' and their own search for identity. I used tielan's suggestion for Maria helping out Steve and Sam in their search for Bucky, and I ended up focusing more on where Maria was in life than on the relationship between her and Steve.
> 
> Apologies if something in Agents of SHIELD negates something in this fic. I have only seen the first handful of episodes, so I haven't seen Maria's episode post-CA:TWS. Apologies also for the pseudo-technology in this, I hope it's not too distracting.
> 
> Anyway, this was fun to write, and I hope you enjoy it!
> 
> Thank you, mods, for all your work running Avengers Fest!

When Steve says they need to dismantle SHIELD entirely, Maria knows he’s right.

It hurts both more and less than she expects. There’s the deep feeling of betrayal. What had become her very life has proven to be nothing more than a lie. There’s the sick feeling of having worked with these people, side-by-side, making calls and offering support, relying on them, all the while feeding an evil and corrupt system. She feels sick, and as she exchanges a glance with Natasha, she knows Natasha understands the feeling, too. Perhaps Natasha understands it better than anyone there.

But she also feels in her element: taking down those she knows are in the wrong. It’s why she joined SHIELD in the first place.

Nick wants to hold on. Somehow, she knows he’ll figure out a way. He always does, and Maria respects his drive to keep SHIELD alive. He has spent more time building it up to what it is now than anyone. But Maria knows that SHIELD is no longer salvageable.

If it were, maybe the five of them wouldn’t be huddled in that damp hideout.

Before they head out, Steve approaches her, alone. She was expecting it; he has already spoken in private with Sam, Natasha, and Nick. She waits for him to speak first, because this is his show now. He is head of this operation, the last one she might ever pull.

Steve looks at her for a long moment before ducking his head away. “Thanks,’ he says, still facing the ground. For anyone else, because of his posture, she would think he was insincere. But Steve’s voice is the most sincere thing she’s ever heard. He glances up again. “Thank you,” he says again. “It means a lot, you being here. Doing this.”

“I put my life into SHIELD,” she says. She straps on her gun and quickly gives it a once-over before holstering it again. “I refuse to see it in the hands of those monsters any more.”

“You could have sided with Fury.” There’s a question there, and Steve meets her gaze.

“I could have,” she agrees. “But he’s wrong. What we knew as SHIELD was a lie. My dad used to build houses for a living. If there’s one thing he taught me, it’s that a poor foundation is just asking to bring the whole thing down on yourself.” She cracks a smile that Steve doesn’t return. “You’re an interesting man, Rogers. Was always disappointed we didn’t get to work together more.”

“You would have ended up hating me,” he says, and finally, there’s that smile of his, charming and sweet. “Don’t listen to orders too well. Just ask Fury.”

“That’s only because you’ve never taken orders from me.” She taps him lightly on the chest as she walks past him. “I could whip you into shape, big guy.”

He chuckles and follows her out. However, despite the light bantering, there’s a heaviness in the air. 

The chances of any of them coming out alive are next to none.

She takes the role of tactical coordinator when they infiltrate the Triskelion. Once Sam and Steve take the helicarriers, it’s up to her to activate the override.

And, even if it’s impossible, she’s going to do her best to get them all out alive.

When she can’t get a lock on Steve, she keeps searching. The building’s about to come down on her, but she keeps at it.

She is not letting any of them die.

She finds him when he gets free of the last helicarrier. Whether he jumped or fell, she can’t tell, but she yells through the comm at Nick and Natasha, and then gets out of there herself.

They find Steve on the shore, hurt, but alive.

Maria breathes slowly, feeling relief and wonder that they made it, and feeling a deep emptiness at the sight of the Triskelion burning down.

\--

Maria isn’t one to sit on her hands. She applies to Stark Industries before the week is out, without an invite from Tony Stark, although he insists he would have when he tracks her down later. 

She meets Steve when he gets released from the hospital. He grins when he sees her, and his handshake is warm and firm.

It’s a stark contrast to when she last saw him, laying on that bank, and she feels relief flood through her.

She knows without asking what Steve plans to do. And though she doesn’t know him as well, she sees how Sam looks at Steve, knows how he has stayed with Steve while he’s been in the hospital, and knows that Sam is going to go with him. She gives her number to Sam.

“I doubt he’d use it,” she says. “You need anything, you call me.”

Sam pulls her into an unexpected hug. “Thanks,” he says. “I’ll keep an eye on Steve for you.”

Maria isn’t sure what to say to that, so she doesn’t say anything.

She doesn’t manage to catch Nick before he takes off to who knows where. She guesses why; she chose Steve. She laid her position out, and for the first time in a long time, it didn’t coincide with his.

She still thinks he could have said goodbye, even if he didn’t plan to ask her to join him.

She meets with Natasha right before she disappears off the face of the earth, too.

“It’s what I’ve always done,” Natasha says when Maria asks why she doesn’t stay. “Don’t see any reason to start now.”

“You could settle down,” Maria says. “Get a job. Your name and face is out there, you could use that.”

Natasha shakes her head. “There are some of us who can stay.” She holds Maria’s hand. “There are those like you. And then there are those who can’t.”

“What about those who could but choose not to?”

Natasha shrugs a shoulder. “That’s what having choice is about, I suppose.”

Choice. Maria recognizes she has had more choice than many of her compatriots. It was her choice to join SHIELD. It was her choice to make it her life. It’s her choice to stay and work in Stark’s DC office.

She can choose what she will do next.

\--

At first, she tells herself she is going to keep out of SHIELD’s - and HYDRA’s - files. It’s what her lawyers, Rosenthal and Ferrari, suggest to minimize any potential liability. But there was a reason she joined SHIELD, and she finds that she needs to know.

She spends days combing through the files. Because of the information dump, much of it is useless: old mission reports, countless files (many redacted with no intact copy still available), and page after page of simple itineraries.

It’s dull work, and anyone who thinks every piece of information would be gold is deluding themself. But there’s every damning bit of evidence there, too, everything HYDRA did, and everything SHIELD did, too, that was unsavory. 

She finds her name on more HYDRA files than she’d like. However unwittingly, she helped them. They all did. And that’s something that’s hard to reconcile with her conscience. She doubts it will ever go away. It’s something she has to live with.

Unexpectedly, she also discovers the key to finding James Barnes.

There is only a single reference to Project FND-42, and it is in a HYDRA file. Even that one reference shouldn’t exist, because it was one of Nick’s secret projects. Because of his extreme paranoia, he kept some things without any paper or digital trail whatsoever, and Project FND-42 was one of them.

Maria is one of only five people who should know about the project. She checks the ID on the file and cross checks it with HYDRA’s database. It’s all done in code, but she cracked that long ago. Billups is the agent who gave it to HYDRA. He was one of the five.

Project FND-42 got abandoned, but HYDRA decided to take the prototype and install it into one of their own projects. It was meant to be a simple tracker, but one stronger than any other they had and undetectable by outside means. This also gave it its greatest flaw. The issue was that if one knew how to look for the supposedly undetectable signal, it was easy to hack into and reroute, no matter what preventions they tried. This way, it could be turned against them, to trick them that the transmitter was on the move when it was somewhere else entirely. It was why the project was abandoned and buried.

Billups was security on the project, nothing more. He didn’t help program it, so that explains why HYDRA didn’t try to replicate it and instead just employed it.

The project HYDRA chose happened to be the Winter Soldier.

It’s simple to get Sam’s phone number and call him.

“I think I know how we can find Barnes,” she says without preamble.

“You can find him?” Sam says, and the next moment, there’s a short burst of static and voices talking to each other.

It’s Steve who speaks into the phone next and says, “Where is he?”

She has to explain that it isn’t a guarantee. If, somehow, Barnes knew about the tracker in his arm and either pulled it out or redirected the signal, it won’t be of use. But it is still worth a try.

“Please,” Steve says, and that’s all Maria needs before she’s stealing a higher power computer from Stark Industries to track down Barnes.

The signal shows up in Vermont of all places. Maria books a flight for Steve and Sam as she calls them. By the time they arrive, the signal has moved north, into Canada, but they find enough evidence in Vermont that it really was Barnes.

From there, Maria uses some old contacts to get Steve a passport, his own having been confiscated when the FBI emptied out known SHIELD-owned locations, his apartment included.

For the next couple of weeks, they follow Barnes on a trip that takes them across Canada and back into the US. He manages to keep just ahead, and if he knows that he’s being tracked, he hasn’t figured out how yet. Or he doesn’t care. Either way, Maria keeps an eye on his tracking signal and provides what support she can.

Sam answers the phone, but all she gets is some muttering about needing to take a shower and the phone is passed over to Steve.

She informs him of a change in Barnes’s movements, as he heads east again instead of west like they thought. He thanks her, but before he can hang up the phone, she says, “You doing okay, Steve?”

He takes a moment to answer. “Yeah,” he says. “We’ll catch up to Bucky.” There’s another pause. She hears a rustling, like he’s maybe playing with the edge of his shirt. “Thank you again. Without you and Sam, I don’t know where I’d be right now.”

“If you need anything else, just let me know.”

Steve hesitates, like he wants to say something else. Maria waits, but all he says is, “Take care of yourself.”

She’s a little disappointed, but also feels a little flutter in her stomach. It makes her feel off balance. But that’s pretty much all she has felt since taking down SHIELD and HYDRA.

Maria sits at her window, laptop still open with Barnes’s signal flashing on a map, but she ignores it. She wonders if, when this is all over, when they find him, what Steve will decide to do next.

She supposes it’s really none of her business. But she still wonders.

\--

One day, while at work, she gets called in by none other than Pepper Potts.

Although this is only the second time she has met Potts, the first being when Stark introduced Maria to her lawyers, Maria knows everything there is to know about her on paper. She knows where Potts grew up, knows about her family, knows she’s allergic to strawberries, and even knows where she likes to buy her bras. SHIELD was never good at the privacy of individuals, especially when those individuals were close to potential SHIELD operatives or consultants.

Nick charged Maria with vetting those around Stark. There’s no doubt that Potts is aware of this, with the SHIELD file information dump. Anyone can look up all that and find Maria’s name on every investigative report.

Yet here they sit, as if there isn’t this strange relationship between the two of them. Potts smiles at her, kind. “I’m not upset about the thefts,” she says, and it’s not at all what Maria expected, “I just want to know why.”

“It’s personal,” Maria says. She refuses to glance away from Potts’s gaze. It might be easier if Pepper had hard eyes, disappointed eyes, but she doesn’t. She looks at Maria like she’s lost.

Maria is lost, but that’s not something she’s willing to admit to Potts.

“I understand that there are things you can’t tell me. I know we’re not friends,” Pepper smiles ruefully at this, “at least not yet. I know that has to be earned. But you are still taking SI property.”

“If you prefer my resignation-” Maria says, feeling prickly and combative all of a sudden. She’s accepted help from Potts and Stark so far, but it’s like Potts says - they aren’t friends.

Potts appears startled by her words. “Oh, no, not at all. But you can’t just keep taking things. If you need something, ask. Please.”

Maria knows Potts is a good person. She’s exceptional. Competent, compassionate, but hard when she needs to be, running Stark Industries better than Stark himself ever did. Maria highly respects her.

But she’s hesitant to tell her about helping Steve. It’s Steve’s mission, not hers.

But Maria can’t keep buying them flights. She can’t keep refining the search on her own without taking more Stark tech. So she approaches Potts, who is still in town, a few days later.

She doesn’t tell her everything. She simply says she’s helping out Steve with a personal matter. Potts understands. She says that should Maria need anything, she just needs to ask. Maria refuses the manpower, but she accepts the financial and technical support SI can give.

It widens the information network she has access to. If they can somehow predict where Barnes is going, maybe they can head him off.

\--

She figures it out. He’s headed back to Washington DC. Why, she’s not sure. But there’s no doubt, with the latest pattern he’s developed.

She has noticed that Barnes backtracks in a regular, predictable way. It’s complex and hard to spot, but once she does, she can figure out exactly where he’s headed.

Maria tells Steve and Sam, and they make plans to get back to DC as soon as they can.

She can hear the smile and relief in Steve’s voice when he thanks her.

On the day that Barnes will likely arrive in DC, she’s at work. She gave Steve and Sam the access they would need to track Barnes locally, so she’s not necessary any longer. But she finds herself glancing continually at the clock.

She hasn’t heard anything by the time she gets home. But as soon as she enters the door, she knows something’s wrong.

Her hand immediately goes to her side, but she doesn’t wear a gun anymore. She has one tucked away in her bedroom, but that’s too far.

She picks up a vase. It’s not ideal, but it will have to do.

Slowly, she moves into the apartment. She glances around, but she doesn’t see anything immediately out of place. Then there’s a noise behind her.

She lashes out, swinging the vase, but just ends up smashing it on some kind of blunt weapon, something solid and heavy that the intruder raises.

No, she realizes, not a weapon, but an arm. The Winter Soldier’s arm.

He goes for her, but she drops back and down, sweeping out her leg to knock him unsteady. He catches himself and goes after her again, this time managing to pin her legs down as she tries to crawl away. She struggles, unable to break free, but her hand finds a large ceramic shard. She twists, planning on driving the shard into any flesh she can find, but he’s fast. He blocks her with his metal arm, but that loosens his hold enough for her to knee his face and force him to let go.

She makes a dash for the bedroom. Her gun is in her dresser, and she pulls it out and spins around, gun raised, to find James Barnes only a foot from her.

He freezes where he stands, eyes dark and flicking between the barrel of the gun and her face. His lip is bleeding, where her knee caught him. There are dark circles under his eyes, and his cheeks look hollow, like he hasn’t had a good meal or a good night’s sleep in a long time. He has a hoody on, the left one torn from the vase. His hair is cropped short, but it’s pressed down, like he’s been wearing a hat.

This is the first time she’s seen him face-to-face.

“Get out,” she says, teeth clenched.

She’s not sure if he somehow ended up under HYDRA’s control again. Maybe, maybe not. If he makes any sudden movements, she’s going to shoot.

She’s not risking death now.

Barnes stays where he is. He doesn’t move for a long moment. Then he says, voice little more than a rasp, “You’re tracking me. Why?”

He reaches into his pocket. She tightens her grip on the gun. “Stop or I shoot.”

He raises his hand, pulling it out slowly, and opens it to reveal a tiny device. She recognizes it instantly: Project FND-42.

“Why are you tracking me?” Barnes repeats. His eyes are cold, but he sounds desperate.

Maria doesn’t relax her stance. “How long have you known?”

“A week.”

That means he’s been keeping it on him. It also explains his sudden shift east. While she tracked Barnes, he was tracking her. Somehow, he figured out how to trace it back to her.

“He’s been looking for you,” she says. “Steve. Steve Rogers.”

The name makes Barnes wince. His eyes dart away, as if he expects Steve - or maybe someone else - to appear behind him.

He crumbles the transmitter and lets it fall to the ground.

“I don’t want him to.” He’s lost the coldness. He sounds panicked now. Maria keeps the gun trained on him, but Barnes doesn’t seem to care anymore. He takes a stumbling step back. “Don’t. Tell him to stop.”

“What are you doing? Where are you going?”

Maria wants to know. Barnes’s moves have been erratic, all over the place. She suspects that he’s trying to find things he remembers, missions he completed as the Winter Soldier, perhaps, but HYDRA’s early records are poor, and many of them took place over seas. Barnes has kept to North America so far.

“I…” Barnes’s breathing quickens. “Please. Make him stop.”

“He cares for you.”

“I know.” Barnes backs up another step. He’s on the verge of fleeing. Maria doesn’t want him to stay, but she wants to know.

“What are you looking for?”

He has no reason to tell her, and she doesn’t expect him to. She still has a gun in his face, and he’s a wreck, more like a scared animal than anything. But, to her surprise, he tells her.

“Who I am.”

She lowers the gun slightly. She still keeps it mostly up, in case he goes for her again, in case some hidden programming kicks in.

She says, “Steve could help you, you know. He wants to.”

Barnes shakes his head. “Have to do it myself.”

She feels both an immense pity and a strange sense of kinship. Now that she is no longer part of SHIELD, she, too, is trying to figure out who she is in this new world. Barnes has it harder, of course. She didn’t have her very identity ripped from her as he had.

But she understands. Steve will, too, eventually. She nods to the door. “Get out of here, then, before he turns up.”

Barnes hesitates a moment. But he turns and leaves, moving quickly and silently.

Her apartment is only a bit of a mess. She puts the gun away slowly, takes a few deep breaths to calm herself, and then rolls up her sleeves. Time to get cleaning before the calvary shows up.

When Steve and Sam do get there, following the transmitter’s last known signal, she asks to speak with Steve alone.

He sits across from her at her dining room table, and she places the remains of the transmitter on the table.

“Barnes was here,” she explains. “He doesn’t want you following him anymore.”

Steve stares at the transmitter. “No,” he says. “I have to find him, have to help, no matter-”

“Steve.” It comes out harsh. It’s a command for him to listen.

Steve meets her eyes, face grim.

“He has to do this on his own. Let him. He’ll come to you when he’s ready.”

“I-” Steve runs a hand through his hair, frustrated. He locks his hands behind his head, bowed toward the table, thinking.

Maria has a lot of that she needs to do, too. But in that instant, she makes one decision.

“You can’t choose for him, Steve. We all make our choices.” Steve looks up at her again. “You chose to become Captain America. I chose to join SHIELD. Barnes didn’t have a choice as the Winter Soldier, but he does now.”

She shakes her head, wonders if this is the right thing or not. Steve is stubborn; she’s seen that. “And right now, he’s choosing to be alone. Like I’m choosing to go back to my parents for a bit. They retired to a small farm. It’s quaint. A bit boring, but gives you time to think. If you’d like, you can join me there, figure out what you’re going to do from here on out. But Barnes wants you to respect his choices, and you should remember that.”

Steve looks at her for a long time, and she can’t read his expression. At last, he gives her a little half smile, and looks down. When he looks up again, he says, “Thanks. I don’t think I’ve said that enough. Except for Sam, you’ve done more for me than anyone these past several weeks.”

“The offer stands, Steve,” she says. “You want some time to get away from things, come visit me there. Teach me how to throw that shield of yours around, I’ll help you improve your shot.”

Steve smiles at that, really smiles. “Thanks.”

She respects Steve. She likes him, too, finds him charming, and doesn’t mind that she got sucked up into his search for his friend.

But it’s time she focuses on herself again.

\--

Maria spends most of her time on the farm doing chores. She’s on a temporary leave of absence, granted personally by Pepper Potts, as well as given a personal phone number should Maria ever feel like chatting. She has a job with SI to go back to when she’s ready. But she’s already started working on getting in contact with Natasha. It’s not easy; Natasha has managed to hide herself away well, just like she wanted to. But if anyone knows where Nick is, it’ll be her.

She’s not certain she wants to get into the spy business again, but she knows that she needs to do something. She’s never been good at being just a civilian.

Sometimes, what she has seen threatens to become overwhelming. Aliens. Superheroes. the fall of SHIELD. But she thinks that building a new foundation might be the start of something good.

Steve shows up without warning. Maria is just preparing to head off to do some hunting. Deer season is finally in, and she hasn’t bagged a buck since she was a teenager going hunting with her dad.

Steve is out there on the dirt driveway, backpack slung over his shoulder, a large bag with undoubtedly his shield in it in his hand. He’s a bit of a fish out of water, looking awkwardly around at the little farm. Maria can’t help her smirk.

She greets him, and when she does, he does that little half smile and glance down routine. It clicks in her head, then, his hesitancy around her, and she leans in to give him a quick kiss.

Steve looks at her surprised for a moment, until his face melts into a heart-stopping smile. “Sam says hello, by the way. Told me I should stop wearing a track in his living room and just come.”

He kisses her, dropping his bags to the side, arms wrapping around her shoulders.

It’s gentle and sweet, and he could really do with some lessons. But Maria doesn’t mind that. She’s not quite ready to jump head first into a relationship, but she does like Steve. She likes him a lot. And she’s more than willing to see if this goes anywhere.

It’s another little piece of the puzzle of who Maria Hill wants to be, of what she wants to accomplish.

She told Steve about making choices, but there’s never any end to it. There never will be.

Maria plans to face those choices head on. She took apart SHIELD, which had become so much of her life, because it wasn’t what she long believed it was. But now she plans to build something else with her life. It won’t be easy. But she is finding that she has more friends than she expects. She's not alone.

That really helps.


End file.
